Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda is a novel by Peter Carey, which won the 1988 Booker Prize, and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award. It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the Cornish son of a Plymouth Brethren minister who becomes an Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the boat over to Australia, and discover that they are both obsessive gamblers. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to a remote settlement at Bellingen, some 400 km up the New South Wales coast. This bet changes both their lives forever.

The Bone People

The Bone People (styled as the bone people) is a Booker Prize-winning 1984 novel by New Zealand author Keri Hulme. Hulme was turned down by many publishing houses before she found a small publishing house in New Zealand called Spiral.

Hotel du Lac

Romantic novelist Edith Hope is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, where her friends have advised her to retreat following an unfortunate incident. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville. Edith reaches Hotel du Lac in a state of bewildered confusion at the turn of events in her life. A secret and often lonely affair with a married man and an aborted marriage later, she is banished by her friends, who advise her to go on "probation" so as to "grow up," and "be a woman," atoning for her mistakes.

Rites of Passage

Golding's sea trilogy, which follows the trials and fortunes of a warship captain bound for Australia. Whilst at sea he writes a journal to send back to England in which he records the mounting tensions onboard ship. Rites of Passage is Book One of a trilogy that was made into a BBC serial called To The Ends of The Earth, and it won the Booker in 1980. It's a comi-tragic sea journey and a coming-of-age tale about Mr William Talbot, a young aristocrat on his way to Australia to take up a government position procured for him by his wealthy godfather.

The Siege of Krishnapur

Students of history will recognise 1857 as the year of the Sepoy rebellion in India--an uprising of native soldiers against the British, brought on by Hindu and Muslim recruits' belief that the rifle cartridges with which they were provided had been greased with pig or cow fat. This seminal event in Anglo-Indian relations provides the backdrop for J.G. Farrell's Booker Prize- winning exploration of race, culture and class, The Siege of Krishnapur.